“Not quite nothing,” he said, taking my hand. He led me down the boardwalk. I could hear voices in the distance, and I could see that a small kiddie Ferris wheel was lit up.
“Someone reported this to the DA last week,” Win said. “These people built an illegal generator and have enough power to run a different ride every Saturday. My dad doesn’t care about them. The city has bigger problems. You’ve heard his stump speech.”
“I have. Unfortunately. But I will say that he did seem like he wanted to make a difference.”
“The only thing he wants is self-advancement.”
The ride operator greeted us. “I just need to warn you that this ride has not been inspected and you may get, for lack of a better word, killed.”
Win looked at me. I shrugged.
“So long as you know,” the operator reiterated.
“Not a bad way to die,” Win said. I agreed.
Win gave the operator money, and we got on the Ferris wheel. I’d never been on one before. We sat side by side, though it was actually a sort of tight squeeze as this particular ride had been built for children, and, though I’m reasonably petite, my behind is generously sized. I was self-conscious about the way my rear was pushing into his, but then he put his arm around my shoulders to make more room, and I stopped thinking about my butt.
It was peaceful on the Ferris wheel. It took forever to get started because the operators waited until the whole thing was loaded to run it. The November air was cold and I could smell something burning in the distance. Win had put on aftershave and it was minty, though not quite strong enough to cover the scent of burning.
I didn’t much feel like talking, and Win seemed to understand that.
At some point, the wheel made it to the top. I could see water and darkness and land and beyond that the skyline of Manhattan, where I had spent my whole sad life. I wished I could stay up there forever. Everything awful happened on land. There was safety in elevation.
“I wish I could stay up here forever,” Win said.
I leaned over and I kissed him. The metal basket we were in began to sway and squeak.
The only person I told was Natty. I didn’t even tell Scarlet. Scarlet was much occupied with being Lady Macbeth. (Hecate turned out to be a far less demanding role.) If she noticed that Win had begun eating lunch with us again, she didn’t remark on it. In addition to the play, Scarlet was busy with a romance of her own—Garrett Liu, who was playing Macduff.
At school, Win and I made sure never to be seen alone. Scarlet was usually with us, and I never waited for him by his locker or anywhere else.
Win and I were still lab partners in FS II, and this was probably the most exquisitely torturous hour of my day. I wanted to touch him, to hold his hand under the lab table, to write him a note, but I never did. I knew that our relationship could not continue if our peers started to know about it or to talk about it. Once that happened it would surely get back to Win’s father, and I didn’t think our silly teenage love affair would survive that.
So, it was torture.
Yet, for as long as it went on, the keeping of the secret was sort of thrilling in its way.
The school day before the opening night of Macbeth, Scarlet had to go to an additional rehearsal so Win and I were left at the lunch table by ourselves. It would have been strange for us not to eat together as everyone knew that was where he usually sat. Still, I suggested that we go eat with his friends in the band, but he thought it would be better if we just stuck to the usual routine.
That lunch seemed to stretch on forever. Being with him and yet not with him was unpleasant. To be alone and yet not alone. We spoke of the play, his band, the weather, our plans for the holidays, and other safe subjects, as if fearful that discussing anything more interesting would reveal more than we wished to reveal. The wooden tables were narrow, and at some point, I felt his knee push up against my knee. I moved my knee, but his knee followed. I shook my head, only slightly, and narrowed my eyes. At that moment, Chai Pinter from our FS II class sat down next to Win. “Hi, Win,” she said. “Annie.” She began to chatter stupidly about some concert she and her set of friends were going to over the holidays. I could barely pay attention because she kept touching Win a lot. I mean, a lot. One moment, her hand was on his hand. The next, it was on his shoulder. The next, she was brushing his hair behind his ear. It was all I could do not to reach across the table and strangle her with my bare hands. I took a deep breath and coaxed myself back from the dark side.
“So do you want to go?” she asked. “Because I’ve got an extra ticket. I mean, it’s a big group of us, so it’s not like a boygirl thing … I mean, unless you want it to be?”
Was this happening? Was I watching someone ask my boyfriend, albeit my secret boyfriend, on a date in front of me? I wondered if perhaps we had done too good a job of covering our tracks. Again, I had an impulse to reach across the table, only this time it was Win I wanted to grab. I wanted to kiss him on the mouth in front of everyone and mark him as mine, mine, mine.
“No, sorry,” Win was saying. “It’s a really nice invitation but my girlfriend wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh,” Chai said, “you mean Alison Wheeler? She said that was just a friends thing.”
“No. From my old school. It’s long-distance.” Win lied so easily that I almost wondered if he actually did have a girlfriend at his old school. At that moment, the bell rang, and Win stood to leave. “See you around, Chai.” He nodded at me. “Annie.”
“Long-distance girlfriend, huh?” Chai said to me. “Well, those never last.”
“I don’t know,” I muttered. Then I grabbed my books and tore out of the cafeteria. I ran down the hall and in the direction of Win’s sixth period, which had changed to English. I knew I could be late to my own sixth period because that was Beery, and Beery was in the theater, finishing the play. I tapped Win on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” I said. “Could I have a word with you?”
He nodded, and I led him into a storage closet that was next to the school theater, and then I kissed him. Kissed sounds so much more tame than what it was. I pressed my body up against his, and then I stuck my tongue in his mouth as deep as it would go, and then I put my arms around him. “I’m tired of this being a secret,” I said.
“I know,” he agreed. “But you said that this is the way it has to be.”
When we left the closet, the halls were empty. Sixth period had started.
The theater door swung toward us, and Scarlet emerged.
“Oh hey,” she said. “Where did you guys come from?” She seemed a bit distracted, which I imagine was because of opening night.
“We were in there,” Win replied, indicating the closet. The hallway was a dead end, so there was really no other place we could have come from.
“Why were you in there?” Scarlet asked. She didn’t seem suspicious, just curious.
“Because Annie wanted to run through her lines and it was the only space where we could be alone,” Win lied. Wow, I thought, he’s quite good at this. But then, I could easily imagine several scenarios in which Win would need to lie to a father like Charles Delacroix.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble remembering your lines? I would have run through them with you,” Scarlet insisted.
“No, you’re busy being the lead. I’m just a witch. I didn’t want to bother you.” I was no slouch at lying myself.
“Chief witch,” Scarlet said. “I’m so proud of you, Annie. I could explode!” And she was proud of me, I could tell, and for whatever reason, this nearly made me want to cry. Because despite the circumstances of my life, I had had no shortage of love. My sister loved me. My brother loved me. Nana loved me. It even seemed that this boy, this Goodwin Delacroix, loved me. But proud of me? I was unaccustomed to anyone being proud of me. Most anyone who might have been proud of me had died long ago.
I should devote a word or two to the play. It was a school play, maybe slightly better than most becau
se Mr. Beery expended significant time and effort into making us not be terrible and because the school was, as I have mentioned, well-funded. Scarlet was the best one. (You probably guessed I would say this, but it doesn’t make it not so.) As for my role? The best thing I can say for myself is that I was the only witch who did not have to wear a wig. My dark, curly hair was deemed witchy enough, and, looking back, I’m not sure that my hair wasn’t the sole reason I was given the role of Hecate.
XIII.
i tend to an obligation (ignore others); pose for a picture
OVER CHRISTMAS BREAK, Win and I took the train to Albany to visit Gable Arsley in the rehab center. I had told Win that I was fine to go by myself as it might be strange for my new secret boyfriend to accompany me on a visit to my badly injured ex-boyfriend. Win argued that he knew the area better than me, and I relented. Whatever. It was a long train ride, and the Hudson River, murky and shallow, didn’t make for much of a scenic view anyway.
Christmas Eve, Gable had sent me a message asking me to come. I suppose Christmas had put him in a contemplative mood or maybe he was lonely. He had written that he had had a lot of time to think since he’d been ill and he knew he’d behaved badly toward me. His doctors thought he might be ready to return to school soon, and he’d like to know that everything was all right between us before that happened.
I had visited the Sweet Lake Rehabilitation Center before because Leo had been briefly sent there after he’d been injured. It was a nice place, as much as any of these types of places can be considered nice places. I’ve visited my share of hospitals and rehabilitation centers, and the main thing that terrifies me about them isn’t anything you see there, but the scent. The chemical-cleanser smell, sweet and awful, covering up illness and weakness and death. Ironically, there was no lake by Sweet Lake, just a big cavern of dirt where a lake or pond must once have been.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Win asked when we got to the lobby. We were far enough away from home that we felt we could hold hands, but now I didn’t want to in case Gable’s parents or siblings or friends were nearby.
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
“I think I should go with you. Isn’t he the same boy who tried to force himself on you?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, Win, I don’t know who he is anymore, but my gut tells me that you in the room will only make him”—I searched for the right word—“irritated. Besides, I’m tough. I’ve been taking care of myself for years.”
“I know you’re tough. That’s one of the things I like best about you. I just want to make life easier for you sometimes.”
“You do,” I said, and then I kissed him quickly on his nose. I’d meant to leave it at that, but then I kissed him again, on the mouth.
Win nodded. “All right, tough girl. I’ll be waiting out here for you. If you’re gone more than a half hour, I’m coming in after you.”
I gave my name to the receptionist at the desk and she gave me Gable’s room number, 67, and pointed me down a corridor.
I knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” I heard Gable say.
“It’s Anya,” I said.
“Come in!” His voice sounded odd in a way that I could not quite pinpoint.
I opened the door.
Gable was seated in a wheelchair that faced the window. He rolled around, and I saw his face. The texture was pocked in some places and still raw in others, and a strange patch of skin was sewn from his left cheek to the corner of his mouth—it was this skin graft that was slightly impeding his speech. There were bandages around some of his fingertips. And his body looked extremely thin and weak. I wondered why he was in a wheelchair and so my eyes drifted down to his thighs, then to his knees, then to his foot. Yes, foot—there was only one of them. The right one had been amputated.
Gable watched me look at him. His gray-blue eyes were still the same. “Do you find me repulsive?” Gable asked.
“No,” I said honestly. The circumstances of my life had not allowed me the luxury of being squeamish around injury.
Gable laughed—a tinny, flat sound. “Then you’re a liar.”
I reminded Gable that I had seen worse things in my life.
“Yes, of course you have,” Gable said. “The truth is, I repulse myself, Annie. What do you say to that?”
“I can understand why you would feel that way. You’ve always cared so much about appearances. Like that day at school … I know you hated having the spaghetti sauce on your shirt more than anything else”—I paused to look at Gable and he nodded and, oddly, even smiled a little at the remembrance—“but how you are now … No one can deny that you are much changed, but I suspect it isn’t as bad as you think.”
Gable’s laugh came out as a wretched bleat. “Everyone says I shouldn’t say such things, but not you. This is why I love you, Annie.”
I did not feel the need to reply. He was still a liar.
“For a long time, I wished I had died,” Gable said. “But not anymore.”
“That’s good,” I replied.
“Come closer,” Gable insisted. “Come sit on the bed.”
Through our exchange, I had been standing by the door. Even though Gable was confined to a wheelchair, I was still wary of him. Bad things happened when the two of us were alone.
“I won’t bite,” he said, kind of like a dare.
“All right.” As there were no available chairs, I walked to the bed and sat down.
“Do you know why I lost my foot? Sepsis. I’d never heard of it. It’s when the body starts shutting down and attacking itself. I also lost three fingertips.” He waved his damaged hand toward me. “But they say I’m lucky. I’ll walk again and even dance. Don’t I look like a lucky, lucky boy?”
“Yes, you do.” I thought of Leo and my mother and my father. “You look like someone who survived something awful.”
“I don’t want to look that way,” Gable said. “I detest survivors.” He spat out the word survivors.
“My father used to say that the only thing a person needed to be in life was a survivor.”
“Oh, spare me the pearls of wisdom from the criminal! Do you think I have any desire to hear anything your father had to say?” Gable asked. “The whole time I was with you, it was Daddy this and Daddy that. Your father’s been dead a million years. Grow up, Anya.”
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“No, wait! Don’t go, Annie! I’m unfit for company and I’m sorry.” Gable’s voice was whiny and babyish. I suppose I pitied him.
“The thing is, you’re still handsome,” I said. And he was. His skin would heal. He’d learn to walk again and then he’d be the same old awful Gable, hopefully a tiny bit kinder and more empathetic than the previous version.
“Do you think so?”
“Yes,” I assured him.
“You’re a damned liar!” Gable roared. He rolled himself toward the window. “I’ve thought of you every day, Annie,” Gable said in a quiet voice. “I waited every day for you to come on your own, but you never did. I thought you would have, considering you had some role in my fate, but you never did.”
“I’m sorry, Gable,” I said. “We weren’t exactly on the best of terms when it happened but I did mean to come. I don’t know if you heard but I was sent to Liberty. And then I was ill myself for a while. And then I just lost track of time, I suppose. I should have come.”
“Should have. Would have. Could have. Didn’t.”
“I really am sorry.”
Gable said nothing. He was still facing the window. After several seconds of silence, I heard him sniffle.
I walked over to him. There were tears running down his ruined face.
“I treated you so badly,” Gable whimpered. “I said terrible things about you. And I tried to make you …”
“It’s forgotten,” I lied. I’d never forget what Gable had almost done, but he had been punished enough.
“And you loved me! The way yo
u used to look at me. No one will ever look at me like that again.”
I hadn’t loved him, but it seemed cruel and beside the point to mention that now.
“And you were my only real friend. None of those other people meant anything to me. I’m ashamed,” he said. “Can you ever forgive me, Annie?”
He was truly pathetic. I decided that I could indeed forgive him, and then I told him so.
“I’ll need friends when I’m back at Trinity. Can we be friends?”
“Yes, of course.”
He reached out his “good” hand for me to shake and then I shook it. He pulled me toward him and the move was so unexpected that I stumbled into him. That was when he kissed me on the mouth. “Gable, no!” I stood and pushed his wheelchair away from me hard enough that the back handles banged against the window.
“What?” he asked. “I thought we were going to be friends again.”
“I don’t kiss my friends on the mouth,” I said.
“But you leaned into me!” he sputtered.
“Are you mad? I tripped!”
I turned to walk away and, with surprising speed and force, Gable aimed his wheelchair at me. I was knocked over onto his hospital bed. At that moment, Win ran into the room and pushed Gable’s chair away from me.
“Get off of her!” Win yelled.
Win raised a fist toward Gable’s face.
“Don’t! You’ll hurt him,” I said to Win.
Win lowered his arm.
“Who the hell is this?” Gable asked.
“My friend,” I replied.
“The kind of friend you kiss on the mouth, I’m betting,” Gable replied. “Yes, now this makes sense. What’s your friend’s name? You look familiar.”
Win and I exchanged looks.
“My name is Win, but you can think of me as Annie’s friend who doesn’t like men that force themselves on women.”